I think people severely, severely underestimate the amount you can make self-publishing.
I blame it on traditional publishing companies and old habits. My mom was a book editor, and the very best authors they published would sell 10,000 books. Their cut was something like $2/book, they'd pull in $20k.
So when I decided to write a book on growth hacking (https://www.secretsaucenow.com), I decided to self-publish. This was more difficult, I had to find an editor and pay them, had to market it myself, etc. Luckily I'm pretty good at the marketing part (hence the book) and I found old contacts of my mom's to edit, but we launched on Kickstarter, so I figured if it flopped I would know in advance.
We sold $66,000 on Kickstarter, then went on to sell another $44,000 on Indiegogo while we finished it up.
Since then we've sold around $20,000 on gumroad. In total it's something like 2,000 copies (though we charge a lot more per copy than most book publishers do, and that keeps us out of Amazon, etc.)
If I had a publishing deal I would make about $5,000 from that. But because I self-published I took home $130,000 minus costs and fees, so we'll conservatively say $100,000.
Now I sit back and check gumroad a couple times a day; I average $800 in sales per day, and almost make more from the book than I do from my (well-paying) full-time job. If I can keep this rate up I will replace my salary (or, rather, double it)
> I think people severely, severely underestimate the amount you can make self-publishing.
I think you really should qualify this for the sake of all of us amateur writers out there. I would've said "people severely, severely overestimate the amount you can make self-publishing."
Most of us don't have a book idea worth writing about or are really bad at writing, or both. It's also really hard for a lot of us to realize which group we're in.
You say "I raked in $TONS for a $40 non-fiction book that helps folks with business development" but I think the rest of us should recognize those details when we see your numbers. If I want to write a book about the subtle great things about unit tests, python, or the great American novel, I should tread with caution. My boring story will probably not make $TONS.
> very best authors they published would sell 10,000 books. Their cut was something like $2/book, they'd pull in $20k.
This is a more interesting part of your post, and worth highlighting. Self-publishing can net you a LOT more than working with a publisher. But for sure you've got to start with an idea that people think is worth buying.
Honestly, for most tech people, the value in either publishing or self-publishing a book is mostly in the resume value. I don't necessarily mean that literally but now your bio includes "published author" and, in my experience, that opens up speaking opportunities and other doors--which open more doors etc.
Most authors won't make a lot of money but, for many types of jobs, published books can support a lot of other things even if they're not some definitive best seller.
You'd think so, but writing a book only impresses recruiters. Other programmers either give you a confused look, try to argue with you, or ask you to write FizzBuzz like this: http://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/
I must admit having made a valiant attempt at writing fizzbuzz in brainfuck as a lark, once upon a whiteboarding session. Ran out of space and/or ink, if I remember correctly.
At a recent job interview, I started answering questions in APL. Didn't quite make it through. In retrospect, it didn't matter as long as I could explain it to the reviewer, because he couldn't read APL anyway.
I'm not a programmer professionally. I basically do technology/developer/etc. evangelism of various sorts. In outbound roles where your reputation is a big part of what you're selling, it definitely makes a difference.
I should update that, but I've been busy improving the content and building better examples and learning how to do better video so I can do justice to the planned upgrades.
What about shopping your book concept around to publishers, validating that there's interest (and that they think you're capable), then if there is, self-publishing?
Do publishers act as a reliable source for validating your idea? or do you rely purely on your audience, if you can validate your audience directly then you'll be able to get a far more accurate prediction of demand for a book than from the opinions of a publisher's agents.
>I think people severely, severely underestimate the amount you can make self-publishing.
You're results are fairly atypical, but I think a lot of it heavily depends on the niche you publish under as well. I have friends that self publish romance books and they sell for ~$3-5. If they make 10k in a year they're happy. People see value in a $40 technical book over a typical novel.
A survey I saw recently had the median income for unagented authors at around $7k/yr for non-technical genres.
I get the sense that different verticals require vastly different strategies. A friend of a friend pulls in ~$10-20k a year on Kindle erotica, but they have to pump out like 2 books a month.
Yup, that is what my friend does. Kindle Unlimited erotica, one new book per month. New releases get ~100k reads during the first month, then another ~50k from all the previous books per month.
Very few people actually "buy" the erotica. Most just consume it through KU.
For anyone wondering (as I was), Kindle Unlimited pays per page based on the size of the fund (number of subscribers total), and the number pf pages read during that month.
>Here are some examples of how it would work if the fund was $10M and 100,000,000 total pages were read in the month:
The author of a 100 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
I hear about so many people doing this that I have to wonder how many freaking romance novels people are reading. I consider myself a pretty frequent reader but it usually takes me anywhere from a week to a month to finish a book, depending on how long/dense it is.
I spent a couple summers home from college working the circulation desk at the local library branch near my parents' home. They lent books for 21 days, and the women who were voracious romance novel readers would return and check out an entire tote bag full of paperbacks every time they visited.
There are writers making millions self-publishing romance novels. (Not many make millions, but the number who work full-time and earn more than they would in a day job is not small.)
The Romance Writers of America industry group has always been well ahead of the curve on self-pub - ironically further ahead than the Science Fiction and Fantasy industry group.
The big problem with self-pub is marketing and audience building. (Fifty Shades started as a marketing exercise, written by a professional marketer.)
Most self-pub has similar problems, including tech self-pub.
Publishers used to do the marketing for writers. Now they expect writers to do it. Most writers have worked out that if they're going to do the marketing anyway, giving up more than 80% of the income in return for an initial advance may not be a great deal.
Unfortunately marketing is hard, and not many people are good at it. Especially writers, who tend to think all they have to do is put the book up on Amazon, mention it on Facebook, and wait.
So the intersection of "can write", "can market", and "can finish a book and not just think about writing one" is a tiny percentage of the total aspiring author demographic.
> Fifty Shades started as a marketing exercise, written by a professional marketer.
Really? I thought Fifty Shades started as a porny fanfic of the Sparkly Vampire book(s?), and a variety of sources (via Wikipedia) seem to back that up with references going back to before it was published.
Definitely, but I've talked to a half dozen other authors who self-published and made a grundle.
Especially if you either find a niche technology with bad documentation or a widespread technology with a bad problem, there's a lot of cash in it. I think the Meteor.js authors talked about pulling in $500k
As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote isn't data. I think the point here is that it's very much dependent on the niche and that your and other successful authors are atypical and doing better than most self published authors.
Whether or not that's true, I don't know. Maybe you are completely right. But we won't know from some anecdotes.
I didn't make the claim that every self published author makes a lot. I made the claim that you can make a lot by self publishing. The opportunity is there.
"You may have heard the phrase the plural of anecdote is not data. It turns out that this is a misquote. The original aphorism, by the political scientist Ray Wolfinger, was just the opposite: The plural of anecdote is data."
The problem with anecdotes is that we don't actually know what the cause of the results was. Maybe its the thing in question, but it could be something else either. That's the whole point of control groups (so you have a baseline to compare against and can filter out "contamination") and double blind tests (so you remove bias).
If you have suspect data, throwing more suspect data in the pile doesn't make it less suspect. Anecdotal evidence is just that: unproven possibly suspect data. Having more of these doesn't make it any more reliable.
So regardless of the original quote, I stand by the plural of anecdote not being data.
If you are writing a book, the average result you should expect is $0. (Like doing an startup.)
The GP point is that publishers also cap the upside of the deal. While self publishing, if you win the unicorn lottery, you'll get an unicorn sized reward.
Perhaps, but how many copies of your book Authority have you sold? 50 success stories is a tiny fraction compared to the number who have bought a high-price book targeted at ebook authors.
Then, when you consider the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who tried selling ebooks without buying your book to help them, it's clear that the OP had very atypical results.
This is great advice. The biggest take away for me is that you are able to market it. Without any marketing, the book will most likely flop.
I wrote and published on Leanpub, (https://leanpub.com/successfulunittest). My marketing was not good enough as I am not that good at it. I only managed to sell about 10 books. In my next book, I would build up the audience as mentioned in the linked article.
Just a outsider note, I've never heard about your book before now or like I say `It popped into existence`. I had a look at the url you posted. Although I couldn't find a sample of your book, let alone a couple of pages to judge it's quality or value.
The table of content's was straight forward but lacking any substance. Maybe consider allow downloading a sample number of chapters?
Agreed, and I would suggest that the fact that the title sound is ungrammatical ("Guide to Successful Unit Test"? Not, "Unit Testing"?) and there is at least one typo in the description. That kills it for me.
Granted that I haven't made a fraction of money that you have made, but my self published book from leanpub has sold around 35-40 paid copies. link: https://leanpub.com/antitextbookGo/
I intentionally didn't want to keep the price high, hence the low % of paid purchases, plus the book is FOSS.
That said, I totally agree that self publishing is not held in high regard by most, even on HN I was told that "it's a guide" and not a book and when you mention it on you resume, the interviewer would expect a real book in a real store!
_If_ you hit the right niche, there is a lot of money in self publishing, that's for sure.
I have a friend who's making enough from her self-published young adult fantasy novels that she quit her job as a .Net/Oracle developer. But most of her writer friends don't do near as well.
She says "tell him you have to sell a LOT to be a bestseller. And if you're an indie, you need someone at the NY Times to like you or you'll never make the list no matter how many you sell."
I'm a long ways from the days when I got into programming because I thought I wanted to be a gamedev but I'm buying Game Programming Patterns just based on how impressed your current book is right now. I'm about to start writing myself and was planning to use Sphinx. Not sure if you're actually using Sphinx for your site, but your design is exactly what I would want for mine.
Congrats. Do you pull anything in from Gumroad Discover? I think I've made ~$4k from them in the last year, which is not a huge part of my sales, but of course more than makes up for the $10/month for Gumroad Premium (or whatever they call it).
Just checked my stats. 7 sales for an average of around $60/sale (we've been on gumroad for a little over a week). So definitely more than paying for gumroad (not even factoring the time it saves me in integrating a Stripe account with downloads), though I think if someone buys the book and shares that they did Gumroad counts that as a "Gumroad" sale. Whether it is or not is disputable in my mind.
Interesting story, good for you. Did you initially market the book through your network and by blasting it all over social media or did you pay for advertising?
I definitely have a following, as does my co-author but most of the sales came from giving away (or publishing) chapters and linking back. To this day our number one driver of sales is people who have read our blog posts about how to get press or how to do SEO, because it's actually actionable stuff.
I can attest to this strategy working, albeit on a much smaller scale with my presale right now. Smaller price point, assuming much less traffic on the medium posts.
Hell, I have more revenue in presales in a little over 6 weeks than 18 months of trying to build SaaS apps.
Nah, I just posted on Reddit and Medium as blog posts, that kind of thing. Honestly I have an entire 196-page book of marketing strategies I actively use, so... you know.
In a word: ouch. Kickstarter and Indiegogo send 1099s. Gumroad doesn't, but between this and my stock market gains I'm in a really nasty tax bracket, so I set a bunch of it aside for taxes. Luckily? I usually spend a lot of the money I earn from side projects on funding other failed side projects, but I basically plan on giving up 30-40% of side project earnings for taxes.
There is some fancy stuff you can do that helps, but once you get above a certain income level you just have to pay.
You're not paying 30-40%. Marginal rates are capped at 39.6% and the vast majority of your income is taxed below that unless you're making many hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Stock market gains are 15% unless you're selling within a year of purchase, and even then they're only taxes as any other income, not penalized in any way. This isn't even taking into account the deductions like home office(s), having your business pay for as many expenses as you can reasonably argue, etc.
You are 100% right, if you're in a state with a progressive state income tax your effective rate can go up pretty quickly. I am spoiled to live in a state with a ~3.2% flat income tax.
I feel your pain. 2016 was my first full year of employment after graduation and I made substantial (short-term) capital gains. I was not thrilled when I filed to say the least.
Writing a book and selling software are similar from a tax perspective; you pay income taxes on the difference between your revenues and expenses.
It might surprise people that authors have material expenses, but it is very, very easy to have them, particularly if one is operating one's business in a disciplined fashion. Authors have an image of being starving artists but lawyers and accountants who work for authors, to pick two examples, are not.
Gumroad doesn't even send 1099's, like Amazon does for Kindle authors. I am not an accountant, but I believe it's just gross receipts on your Schedule C.
If you make over $400 in income from book sales you need to take that income and apply self-employment tax on that income.
In addition you need to make quarterly payments for the estimated tax.
If you haven't done so yet. To fix your situation you can file an amended return. A CPA can do it for you... given your income, you should be able to afford it.
As your income grows so it does the likeliness of being audited.
Thanks! Yeah I mean it's not that different from my freelancing. I've been paying estimated tax and self-employment tax for years. Mostly now it's about selling products (example: I have to deal with New Mexico gross receipts tax, ugh) vs services.
You only need to make quarterly payments if you meet certain criteria, largely if the revenue is above a certain amount and you have a reasonable expectation the revenue will continue.
People severely, severely underestimate the amount you can make doing it yourself versus giving a cut to investors
ftfy
People enamored with the literary arts often don't have a marketable skill that would allow the freedom to pursue a book without an advance and outside capital/support. Good to see Kickstarter has helped change that.
>, I launched a _course_ called The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. Since then, I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 ($1350/week).
(The emphasis on "course" was mine.)
It looks like much of the revenue was the full course which means videos and Q&A webinars.
I'm not going to say it's clickbait but it's slightly misleading to put "Book" in the article's title since most tech authors including Douglas Crockford, John Resig, etc will not be able to pull $70k in 12 months whether they self-publish or let a traditional publisher like O'Reilly market the book.
That said, congratulations on producing content that people want to pay for. Your numbers seem to be better than the author royalties from Pluralsight/Lynda for a single course.
The most important thing you can do to increase your odds of success when releasing a technical book is to have multiple pricing tiers, adding additional content so you give people the option to pay you more than $30 or whatever you are charging for just the book.
I released a book in May 2016 teaching PHP programmers how to refactor code with lots of loops and conditionals into collection pipelines.
So far it's made about $180,000 CAD.
~$30,000 of that came from the "just the book" tier, at $29-$39 (depending on if the customer bought at the discounted launch price)
~$75,000 came from a "book + screencasts" tier, at $59-$79
~$75,000 came from a book/screencasts/example application tier, at $135-$179
If I had only given people the option of the cheapest tier, I would've made less than half of what I made by adding additional tiers.
The absolute bulk of the value is all in the cheapest tier, in fact the screencasts are the same examples from the book + just two bonus examples, and the example application is a project I already had that happened to use a lot of the principles in the book.
I think this sort of success is pretty achievable, I just followed the strategy outlined by Nathan Barry in his "Authority" book: http://nathanbarry.com/authority/
Nobody is going to make a lot of money selling a $40 book through a traditional publisher. If you really want to produce content like this and be able to earn a living from it, you need to be a bit more strategic about it, which includes things like tiered pricing.
I don't think it's deceptive to call it a "book" just because the author put in the extra effort to give people the option to pay a premium price for some bonus material; that's the right way to self-publish a book if you actually want to earn a decent income from it.
EDIT: I mean writing functional map. reduce. filter. style code will be "nicer" looking in many cases, but is there really a financial payoff to refactoring loops?
I'm just a random programmer but if this was in my wheelhouse I would absolutely buy the full package. I may even buy it to see if it's something that could be applied to my C# brethren :)
Yeah honestly I was surprised at the success as well, because you're right, it's sort of a niche topic that's hard to tie to some measurable pay off.
I can't say for sure what the split was between personal sales and business sales, but based on the customers I've spoken to, I would guess the vast majority were personal sales. If you include folks who purchased it themselves and then asked for reimbursement through their company, I think that would cover every customer save a handful.
Aka price discrimination. Another method is to add a small hurdle to get the lower price; people's willingness to pay to avoid it correlates pretty well with their ability to pay more.
Once you learn about it, it's pretty fun trying to identify the products/companies doing it. Like those coffee capsules that just happen to go on sale every couple of months.
Is putting those capsules on sale every few months an example of price discrimination? I thought price discrimination was charging different people different amounts for the same product at the same time. E.g. if someone's User-Agent implies they're on an Apple computer, charge them 10% more (the argument being they can afford it), that kind of thing.
And so it is: some more price-sensitive people will wait for the sale and buy a whole lot to last them to the next sale, while others don't care and just buy every week regardless. So you've managed to sell the exact same product at two different prices, using the "small hurdle" method I described before (forcing buyers to plan their coffee capsule purchasing).
Granted, this is not exactly at the "same time", but for a consumable product like coffee, sales aren't measured in such short scales anyway. They're still two effective parallel prices if you measure by quarter.
I actually sort of pieced together everything I could from Nathan through his (now discontinued) podcast, blog posts, and interviews.
I purchased Authority (just the book) afterwards, in case there were any other useful pieces of info in there and to say thanks for all of the free content that helped me so much, and just buying the book up front would've saved me a lot of hunting around, all the good stuff is in there :)
That being said, the podcasts and interviews are still well worth a listen, if only to really reinforce some of the more important ideas and build confidence in the approach by hearing about other folks' success stories.
> most tech authors including Douglas Crockford, John Resig, etc will not be able to pull $70k in 12 months whether they self-publish or let a traditional publisher like O'Reilly market the book.
I think they definitely could if they self-published, but not if they went through a traditional publisher.
The cut that a publisher takes is insane compared to the value they provide. For fiction, it may be worth it because they act as a quality control filter and send a signal to readers that the book is may be better than the sea of self-published novels out there.
For technical books, the market is totally different. It's not that crowded, and most readers will find the book through you, the author, and not through bookstores or the publisher's own marketing efforts. In fact, most technical publishers aren't even interested in you if you don't already have an audience.
A publisher might help you get on bookshelves (though you can do that while self-publishing too), but I haven't seen much evidence that they will otherwise significantly increase your sales. Given how big a slice of the pie they expect to take, you should be confident that they will do something like increase your sales by 8-9 times before they are earning their keep.
Publishers also help with the other production stuff: developmental editing, copy editing, design. I'm not convinced they are very helpful at the former—again you already need an audience and you are more clued in on what they audience wants than the publisher is. Copy editing you can just hire a freelancer to do and throw a relatively small fixed chunk of money at them for. Likewise for design.
If you decide to self-publish, you do have to do lots of grunt work yourself—managing mailing lists, dealing with freelancers, talking to foreign publishers for translations, etc. All of that is a drag, and there's value in outsourcing it.
The interesting question is whether you would be willing to pay a separate company something like 80% of your profits, forever in order for them to do that. Given that it amounts to writing a few emails and filling out some forms every now and then, that seems like a pretty steep price to me.
Someone above already chimed in with results far better than mine, and they sold just a book (and it's like half the length of mine). So it is definitely possible.
Part of the advantage of self-publishing is that you can be sophisticated in your product and not sell "just a book".
>Someone above already chimed in with results far better than mine, and they sold just a book
I saw that "Secret Sauce" also had a video package with a Slack channel so it's not clear to me if
austenallred was talking about about receiving $124k for "just a book" with no value-added content.
>be sophisticated in your product and not sell "just a book".
Yes, that makes since. On that note... since you have a year's worth of data, have you determined if the "Slack channel" for the $99 package to be a big factor to encourage purchase?
I don't really have a way to know the Slack channel's value because I don't offer a package without it. But I can say it's been very popular and is still very active a year after launch.
The Slack channel was a last-minute afterthought when I was testing the product originally, but I kept it in and advertised it because so many of my testers thought it was a great idea.
> My favorite example of this (from the Ruby community, of course) is Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. If you're a Rubyist, you already know what this is, but if you're not, it's a legendary tome in the Ruby community.
Not sure that's a great example, in my view. I remember when I was learning Ruby, and everyone online was "Read that _why guide it's great!!" It was a mess. I couldn't learn anything from it at all. There was probably good content in there, but the interspersed poorly drawn comics and nonsense asides/tangents made it impossible to follow. Maybe it was great for some people but it did not fit my learning style at all. I expect a vanilla introduction, a clear progression through control structures, data types, keywords, variables, constants, operators, etc. and a concise review at the end of each chapter, structured reference at the end, etc. In other words, a plain vanilla "Pragmatic Programmer" or "O'Reilly" style guide.
> Having a unique voice is one of the most important things you can do to make your content stand out in a sea of "blah". It's what will make readers remember you and keep coming back.
> I remember when I was learning Ruby, and everyone online was "Read that _why guide it's great!!" It was a mess. I couldn't learn anything from it at all.
I had the same experience (started Rubying in late 2015). I had much more success with RubyMonk, Metaprogramming Ruby 2, and some other "Ruby for Perl hackers" blog posts and such.
This article is full of great advice on how to write a book, whether you publish for yourself or for someone else.
I have written 10 books. 9 for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I've made a nice side income on my books by doing many of the same things he lists. This isn't so much about self-publishing as it is about writing great technical content.
Full disclosure - in addition to writing, I am a development editor for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. But I publish my own books with them because they offer the best of both worlds. They split the profits with you 50/50, but you get an editor to work with throughout the process, and they take care of a lot of other things, like distribution, sales, billing, copy-edit, typesetting, etc so you don't have to.
But the important thing is to get your message out there to people in a quality way, like this article suggests. Do the research, find your voice, write about something people care about. If you go the self-published route, get technical reviewers, hire a development editor, and get a copy editor. Your end results will go far.
I think for those writing a technical book, myself included, just don't know if it's worth going self-publish with a minimal cut from payment providers and such. Or getting on board with PragProg who would help with marketing, editing, etc and still get a decent royalty.
I understand there are no clear-cut rules to go by, but even a generic "If you don't have 10k email list, 50% of PragProgs sales will most likely be higher" might helper writers understand when to get help.
I can share some perspective on this which will lend evidence to Austin's conclusions regarding the financial gains to be had self-publishing.
Having written ~10 books, including a bestselling technical book for a publisher (13 years in print), worked as an acquisitions editor for large technical publishing house (signed more than 60 books during my time there), and written a bestselling self-published book (http://www.easylaravelbook.com/), it's suffice to say I have a well-rounded understanding of publishing financials.
If you're willing to put the time into writing a quality book (not to mention are a subject matter expert), there are significant profits to be made taking the self-publishing route. It all boils down to the huge profit margin to be had as compared to traditional publishing. Take my Easy Laravel book for instance: I sell it at $28 via Leanpub and Gumroad. Gumroad takes 8.5% + $0.30 per sale, meaning I make $25.32 per unit. Compare this to traditional publishing, in which the same book at $28 would sell into a chain at say a 40% discount ($16.80). The author's royalty is calculated from this, which in most cases starts at 10% (sometimes it scales), meaning the author makes $1.68 per unit sold. This means comparatively the self-published author is making 15 times what the traditional author is making.
So ask yourself: as a self-published author could you sell at least 1/15 the number of books a traditional publisher would otherwise sell? If yes, then you're going to come out ahead. If the book is of sufficient quality, and you are actively promoting it by blogging and maintaining an e-mail list, then there is no doubt in my mind anybody with adequate writing skills (you don't have to be Shakespeare) and determination will come out ahead, particularly given the ability to electronically distribute the book through all major channels.
If you're thinking about self-publishing, just do it. Even if you don't finish the book (many will not), you'll have a lot of fun doing it!
[Edit: Just realized I didn't actually reply in Austin's thread. Despite lurking for years I think this is actually my first ever HN comment. Sorry for being clueless.]
Indie publisher here. Nate did a lot of research to identify the hole that needed to be filled, and then executed on developing his voice, setting up product tiers, spreading the word, etc. I also liked his “posts as prototypes” approach—it’s a great way to develop the ideas, hone creativity, and get feedback prior to releasing a book. Congratulations!
However, I would like to offer a word of caution for anyone considering self-publishing. For every selfpub sales success there are hundreds of books that fail to make an impact. U.S. ISBN registrations for self-published books have basically doubled every few years (1) and probably crossed the 1 million mark last year. However, the number of Americans buying books has slowly declined over the past several years, and is probably around 45% of the population (down from over 55% a decade ago). (2) The growth in demand is simply not there to support the explosion of supply, at least in the United States.
Niche technical books that are well-written and effectively marketed have greater potential than a poorly edited shape-shifting romance title from an unknown author. On the other hand, technical titles also have to compete with free or low-cost information on the Internet, YouTube, etc., not to mention existing books that dominate the field (something that Nate referenced in his post).
Of course, there are other rewards associated with writing books, including personal satisfaction, expanding one’s personal brand, and improving writing and editing skills. But sales are never guaranteed.
> Niche technical books that are well-written and effectively marketed have greater potential than a poorly edited shape-shifting romance title from an unknown author. On the other hand, technical titles also have to compete with free or low-cost information on the Internet, YouTube, etc., not to mention existing books that dominate the field (something that Nate referenced in his post).
Something you've left out is "correct pricing". I'm happy to pay $10 or even $15 without much thought for a technical book on a topic of interest. Once the price goes above $15, I put a lot more thought into the decision, and usually don't buy.
People are too quick to throw out "$50 for a book that helps you get your work done is nothing". That's true, but $50 is not pocket change, and my expectation is that most books I buy will provide either no value or a little value. In other words, be careful if you start doing calculations of book sales at $40. Sales of books that you think are priced at $50 are driven largely by discounted sales. (I have seen some numbers on this, but don't have the reference, sorry.)
Keep in mind though, that lots of technical book sales are made to employees of companies that may give them an annual budget for such things, or might just require a quick "Yeah, sure go ahead and expense it" type of approval.
I agree that $50 isn't nothing to an individual, but it is approaching nothing to a large company.
it seems like the exploding self-publishing market has coincided with a massive increase in fake marketing tactics, purchased reviews and copy-catting of any material that gets traction. as an indie publisher how do you compete in a market that is inundated with cheap frauds?
I publish utility nonfiction (i.e. "how-to guides”). There is indeed a universe of cheap frauds using every scammy tactic you can imagine. There is also the issue of free competition on the Web, YouTube, the library, etc.
But I have found that the seemingly infinite supply of information resources gives a big advantage to brands that stand for quality. My customers don’t like wading through YouTube, or sites of unknown provenance or quality, or books with dodgy covers and keyword-stuffed titles. My brand (In 30 Minutes Guides, 1) and motto (Quick Guides for a Complex World) stand for something, and anyone browsing through first few pages or the verified reviews will see that the books are legit. We update them regularly, and I am constantly expanding the catalog - our newest release was on Monday for Crowdfunding Basics In 30 Minutes and in a few months we will have another title about end-of-life documentation as well as an update of LinkedIn In 30 Minutes for the new UI.
The people who bought the book found the content super-useful, but the subject matter just did NOT catch on as something my audience was willing to spend money on. I found d a real pain point, just not one that was compelling enough. I also prompted it poorly.
Here's hoping my 3rd book does better! I feel optimistic about the profit potential of self-publishing, generally speaking. As has been mentioned here, you have to market it well AND have a compelling subject matter with a hungry audience. It's not easy.
> I recently removed Google Analytics from my site when I realized it didn't really matter to me.
Interesting idea. If your analytics reports don't cause you to change course, there is no reason to collect them in the first place.
Still, it's hard to believe that analytics add zero value to an aspiring self-publisher. What about simple things, such as knowing which posts get the most traction, and so may be more likely to appeal to someone buying a book or course. That information can be quite counterintuitive.
I think if I actually paid for advertising, it would make sense.
But since I don't spend money advertising, and I'm going to write about what I'm going to write about regardless of 10k visitors or 70k, I don't see the value.
Also, programmers are privacy-sensitive. I think people like looking at their Ghostery icon on my site and seeing nothing is being blocked.
Basic information is easy to grab from your server logs. Unless you're doing much more detailed stuff (journeys through the site, in-page interaction, etc) then you may not really need google analytics. You can probably do a lot more with just logs than I expect, but the most basic thing that a lot of people want (basically just a hit counter) is easy enough to get.
I've been having success playing with http://goaccess.io/ recently. Not doing much with it (partly as nobody is really visiting my site and there's not yet much real content up :)) but it seems good and doesn't require you to change what you're doing.
This is an interesting read. I published a tech book for a major publisher, received a $7K advance which never earned-out. Of course, the timing of my technical topic couldn't have been worse, as the industry shifted. But if I were to do it all over again, I'd definitely go the self-publishing route. Especially, since I understand a professional editor/writer workfow.
Edit: one other thing that's interesting is that he did this in 2016, about a decade after Ruby on Rails was introduced, and after the market was saturated with Ruby on Rails material .
Great work, and congrats on boosting your consulting business. When I published my book, I definitely got clients and work because of it, that was the real payoff.
Articles like this depress me. I know that if I want to achieve financial independence, I am going to need to start a business, which involves activities like this. (I should also get involved in real estate). However, when I sit down to think about this, I realize how untechnical I am, get depressed, and then move on..
I was that person for fucking years. After my Shark Tank appearance I went into a period of minor depression and didn't really try my hand at entrepreneurship until this project, which was almost 7 years later.
All I can give for advice is to build a snowball - start as small as possible, and work on it consistently. Eventually the success will come.
Yup. You can see it in the replies to Austen's results. "Your results aren't typical","did you have a following before", etc. I've been in their shoes, so I know now it was all just excuses, not tactical questions.
I just watched the Shark Tank clip on Youtube and I'm glad you came back to being an entrepreneur, despite the setbacks. Wow, the sharks were brutal, btw.
As a long-term play, I think as much as people think about investing capital, they should think about investing their time the same way. You put some blocks of time into a particular project that scales well, and it'll eventually provide you with enough passive income to escape being a service layer for hire. In that sense, a job would be a portfolio of investments you can make time-wise in building yourself and passive income assets.
+1000, thinking about digital products like books as assets akin to investing in stocks has been an important realization for me over the past few months.
Most of us who participate in communities like this have this insane super power of being able to create something out of nothing (but time and effort) that has value to people.
We can build little things that work their asses off for us forever, just requiring a nudge once in a while to keep them moving.
I've released two digital products in the last year, a book and a video course. The book will be a year old in May and still makes me $2500-5000/month, and the course (which came out in November) is still making ~$30,000/month, although I expect that to slow down soon.
Even still, with a little bit of maintenance marketing effort, I can expect those products to keep making a few thousand dollars each month for the next couple years while being able to dedicate the vast majority of my time to creating new products (assets) for my portfolio.
It feels a lot like the mentality that's pushed in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" of owning things that generate cash flow, but instead of having to find money to purchase real estate, folks like us can invent these assets out of thin air. Really blows my mind.
It still boggles me how liquid virtual assets are.
My family had an old-school mentality and put up their assets in housing where they could. Unfortunately, that ties them to cities around the world, and incurs a penalty in terms of time and maintenance that goes far beyond ("let me build a few backlinks") + school taxes, municipal taxes, condo fees, sewage etc. etc.
No I actually built my own platform for self-hosting the course. I don't think you can make much money through sites like Udemy, I would instead recommend a platform like Coach (https://www.withcoach.com/).
A good read. One of the more interesting, informative and well written pieces to appear here in a while.
The one concern I have with this playbook is that fashions in niche technical subjects change (I think) very quickly. For this to beat simply selling coding services on a T+M basis the revenue stream would need to continue for several years, with a suite of similar books/courses added over time. Are people still going to be interested in paying money to learn about Ruby performance in 2 years from now? Can two, three, four equally profitable subject be identified and mined every year? Probably not, unfortunately, due to this industry's eternal desire to churn the tech (often to no obvious positive purpose).
At his price point, he'll probably get a continual trickle of customers. I sell a book called "Rebuilding Rails" -- not as successful as his, but I've also made a few tens of thousands of dollars, so not nothing. And I reliably make a few more thousands of dollars yearly, years after I wrote it.
After Ruby is a "hot" language (years ago), it becomes a legacy language where companies will pay money for assistance with their products. In the $10-$15 niche, you need individual engineers to think a language is neat. In the $40-$10,000 niches, you need companies to think they can save some engineering time.
Another good idea if somebody make a Good self paced book for Machine Learning. There are millions of tutorials available online but its the similar situation as Ruby on Rails. All somebody need is to just aggregate all this info in a single book and with Machine Learning hotness these days you will probably end up selling few of them. Just an idea
I got a raise of around $30,000 as a result (ish, hard to measure) of writing my technical book. I'm also sufficiently well-known that I'm unlikely to ever have trouble getting a Ruby job. That's hard to quantify exactly, but I think it's fair to say it's worth $5,000-$10,000 annually, as a rough equivalent.
(My book sells for around $30-$40 rather than $15, but the math is similar.)
Sure. Part of it is probably egoboo (and/or unrealistic expectations). But, as I wrote in another comment, a lot of people in tech depend on their public reputation for work/salary/etc. Published books help that reputation.
Hmm... I intend to make an info product that I believe could be used by most developers, however, my idea is to sell it for $10, thinking that no developer should say he can't afford it. Mostly because of that as I want as many to actually read and apply.
From what I read here, this product, which would have two parts and is largely done, I should sell it for $49 specifically with higher tiers.
Not sure what to think honestly. I am close to finishing it and I want to make money, but mostly want to share with other developers and open communication.
Congrats Nate! Really glad to see you doing well post JudoJobs, forwarding this along to a few people who are into self-publishing technical books. Accounting for taxes on self-publishing just seems to be something you need to be careful about if you are selling via a few different channels like gumroad so you aren't audited.
Noob question. What are the implications of writing books on platforms that are commercial in nature? Say I want to write a book or apigee or IBM bluemix. Are there licensing restrictions on what I can cover and what not.
Why not start writing a few articles for IBM developerWorks. At the very least it will connect you to some good editors and give you credibility for the longer book. Potentially IBM will even pay you to write the book and publish it under their press.
To your specific question the vendor's EULA may have language that puts in restrictions (e.g. most restrict benchmarks). So, give the EULA a close read to get a sense. Second issue that you will have to pay attention to is trademarks, you'll need to seek some guidance so as to not put you on the wrong side of trademark law.
can you please suggest from experience what is the best way
to copy right and translate book to english , if i want to self publish ? as none native english writer ?
Thanks!
Good advice on persistence. It will be easier if you love it. But there will also be times when you'll hate it. Sticking to the plan though is most crucial.
I actually have an HTML version of the course, it comes with the purchase. This is because Gitbook can automatically output an HTML version. It's not the best, but it works.
I didn't do a free version because it's a premium product - if you want the "free version" of my stuff, you read my blog.
That's what it sounds like. You have to realize, that anyone that actually has a performance problem is likely to save many multiples of that monthly. Just getting an engineer to look at a performance problem for an hour is costing a company at least $100 (probably more in opportunity costs). If you can save time with some training it's totally worth it to buy a book like this and give it to one of your devs to see if they can reduce your AWS footprint.
Mostly likely most of that $70k came from corporate credit cards.
The book is part of a bundle of course materials--so it isn't exactly all of that money for the book alone. The book may represent a significant part of the value, but it's a bit misleading.
thank you for this. As I have mentioned in previous comments a fellow chef and I are looking into publishing our own chef's guides with an application and indepth wrote ups.
Posts like this and all the comments are immensely helpful(and really help to keep the motivation up!)
Hi, author here. I don't do that. I think I even mention in the post that I don't bother with vote-ringing on HN because I think HN's algos are pretty sophisticated on this front. Plus, HN hellbans a lot for a lot of reasons, so any type of manipulation is extremely risky.
Also, I generally write enough stuff that I don't need any one particular post to succeed, but keeping my domain off any "blacklists" is very important to me. Vote manipulation would be a very, very bad decision for me.
> I don't bother with vote-ringing on HN because I think HN's algos are pretty sophisticated on this front.
I think the right answer should be that you don't do vote manipulation because it's deceitful and unethical. Your argument here is basically "because I can't get away with it". :(
Well luckily these customers have the money for the book because they were able to launch an actual business at least 2 months sooner and can move 5x more quickly than all the competitors still mulling over which lesser productive alternative framework they'd like to use.
I blame it on traditional publishing companies and old habits. My mom was a book editor, and the very best authors they published would sell 10,000 books. Their cut was something like $2/book, they'd pull in $20k.
So when I decided to write a book on growth hacking (https://www.secretsaucenow.com), I decided to self-publish. This was more difficult, I had to find an editor and pay them, had to market it myself, etc. Luckily I'm pretty good at the marketing part (hence the book) and I found old contacts of my mom's to edit, but we launched on Kickstarter, so I figured if it flopped I would know in advance.
We sold $66,000 on Kickstarter, then went on to sell another $44,000 on Indiegogo while we finished it up.
Since then we've sold around $20,000 on gumroad. In total it's something like 2,000 copies (though we charge a lot more per copy than most book publishers do, and that keeps us out of Amazon, etc.)
If I had a publishing deal I would make about $5,000 from that. But because I self-published I took home $130,000 minus costs and fees, so we'll conservatively say $100,000.
Now I sit back and check gumroad a couple times a day; I average $800 in sales per day, and almost make more from the book than I do from my (well-paying) full-time job. If I can keep this rate up I will replace my salary (or, rather, double it)